Goodreads Bookshelf
Thursday Think 'n' Share LXXXVI
In honor of my spring break spent learning to build a house, it's a special housing issue of Thursday Think 'n' Share!
Describe the house(s)/apartment(s) in which you grew up.
We lived in one house the whole time, a house out in the country in Ohio. The house had 3 bedrooms, living room, dining room, kitchen, a big entry room we called the laundry room, one and a half baths, and a two-car garage. It sat on just less than an acre of land, though there was a lot of open space around it, so the lot seemed larger. It was a nice place to grow up and my mother still lives there.
Describe the house/apartment in which you currently reside.
I live in an apartment owned by the school for which I work. It's the first floor of a three-story house with one family above me (they're great). I have two bedrooms (one of which is my office/music room/spare bedroom), a spacious living room and dining room, a small-ish (but adequate) kitchen and laundry in my bathroom. The upstairs neighbors have fenced in the back yard and their sweet little bassett hound often waits there to greet me when I come home or head to school in the morning (this is also an excellent place for my girlfriend's dog--especially when the bassett is there to run around with her and tire her out). I love being able to walk to work and also being an easy walk from a really neat neighborhood (Thayer Street, for those who know Providence) and not that far from downtown either, definitely walkable in decent weather. I like Providence and I like being so accessible to great parts of it.
Describe your dream home (if different from the above).
I guess "dream home" is a very subjective thing. I mean, there's the dream home in which money is no object and there's the dream home that I might reasonably expect to achieve. I'll start with the latter. I think my dream home would be an energy-efficient place that I built inexpensively for myself. Building it myself, it wouldn't be very large, but it would have lots of bookshelves and enough space. Ideally it would cost little enough that I could simply buy it rather than taking out a mortgage for the rest of my natural life (or even significant portions of it). It would be built in such a way as to have very minimal heating and cooling costs. I suppose the real "dream" part of this is that I actually manage to get all the details right when doing it myself! I'd have enough land to produce most or all of my own food and some wide open space just to have, preferably with some woods, fields, and a stream running through it. I'd have a dog or two and there'd be enough space that they could just roam when they want to (and I could too).
Now, if money wasn't a consideration, the house would be bigger. I'd have a whole room for a library/reading room and another for music, a room with great accoustics and a miniature recording studio. I'd have an amazing kitchen. It would be convenient to a city like (maybe exactly like) Providence but still be basically out in the country with plenty of land. The other considerations above still apply.